


No ghosts need apply

by okapi



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Bit of a Weird One, Crack, Ghosts, Guilt, M/M, Spanking, Supernatural Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-25 05:09:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12523704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: Holmes has an unusual manner of dealing with failure. ACD. Crack.I rubbed my face with my hand. “You want me to believe that you somehow raised the late Mister James Phillimore for the purposes of birching you?”For Kinktober Day 21- Impact Play





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to sanspatronymic for spotting [this gem](http://yesterdays-print.com/post/166628547724/st-louis-post-dispatch-missouri-august-2-1896).

It is curious how one unremarkable act may lead to a thoroughly remarkable discovery.

For example, if Holmes had not fallen—or been thrown, the role of gravity is still a matter of disputation—through the window of The Crescent Moon pub, I might never have learned of the existence of ghosts.

His back was cut up badly, his hair littered with glass shards and despite initial protests, he eventually acquiesced to simple logic: it was late, and I was, in fact, a doctor and tending to his wounds himself would be inefficient at best.

I made the sitting room into a field hospital as Holmes slipped his left arm out of his shirt. The torn, bloody garment hung from his right side.

I circled him.

And gasped.

Not at the sight of the new wounds, a bevy of cuts, only one of which would require sutures, but rather at the vestige of an older wound.

The bruise that covered Holmes’s left shoulder blade was fading, its hues already showing signs of the shift from deep violet to green and yellow.

But it was in the perfect shape of a human hand.

“Someone has abused you!” I cried indignantly.

He shook his head. “I consented to the act. Please do not inquire further—”

“Who did it? I’ll thrash the hide off him!”

“Good old Watson! No, you would scarcely believe the truth if told, but I swear to you that I, of sober mind, agreed to this.”

I stepped in front of him.

“Tell me, Holmes.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I shan’t repeat myself, Watson.”

I was hurt. “I shan’t judge, Holmes. We’ve shared some rather extraordinary adventures, and I’ve seen a bit more of the world than most.”

“The matter is not of this world.”

“Someone struck you and based on the location of the blow and the bony prominence beneath, he probably hurt himself in the process. Serves him right.”

“I hurt him first.”

“Oh, yes?” I smiled and took a pugilist’s stance and threw a punch in the air between us. “Your famous left jab?”

“I killed him.”

I froze and stared in silence.

“I failed to save him,” Holmes added.

“As a doctor and a soldier, I know those are two very different, my dear man. But I don’t understand. You allowed him to abuse you before he died? Why? And who?”

He averted his gaze like a petulant pupil.

I fixed him with the glare of a stern schoolmaster.

He looked up and confessed,

“It was Mister James Phillimore.”

My jaw dropped. “You found him!”

He shook his head. “I summoned him. After death.”

I blinked. “That’s impossible, Holmes.”

“Highly improbable, Watson.”

“How?”

He lumbered to the bookshelf and selected a tome and showed me the inside. It was not, in fact, as the cover indicated, Mrs. Beeton’s latest edition.

“ _Necromancy for Children_!” I exclaimed. Disbelieving my own eyes, I read again. “For children, Holmes!” I repeated.

“I am a busy man, Watson. I can hardly commit myself to becoming a master of the dark arts, can I? And this volume suits my purpose, for it has an entire chapter on discipline of the lower variety.”

I rubbed my face with my hand. “You want me to believe that you somehow raised the late Mister James Phillimore for the purposes of birching you?”

“I failed him. I missed a critical element of the case. I should have—”

He spoke, but I wasn’t listening. I was looking at a piece of rectangular floorboard peeking out from the rug. It was the last known address of the Moroccan case.

“I am not under the sway of any substance, Watson,” said Holmes.

“This is an opium dream, Holmes! That is a _real_ bruise on your back!” I pointed. “It was made by a _real_ flesh and blood hand!”

“No and yes and no.”

I growled in frustration. “And your disciplinarian is an idiot. Who spanks someone on the shoulder blade?”

Holmes lit like a Christmas tree and bubbled like a New Year’s toast.

“Yes, the very point! Phillimore’s eyesight! I did not take it into account. He had not had a new pair of spectacles in over fifteen years!” Holmes deflated, then shrugged. “And, of course, as a ghost, he missed the mark by a mile. Didn’t do much better with the umbrella, either. More’s the pity.”

I frowned. “The umbrella?”

Holmes turned and let the shirt drop to the floor.

I gasped.

I’d seen my share of bruises, with and without Holmes, and, yes, the one across the right side of his lower back might have been made by the handle of an umbrella.

“I failed him, Watson. I called him up and bid punishment. He obliged.”

I snorted. “You’ve been duped, just like some of your poor clients. But for the sake of argument, let’s hear the whole story while I work. Or would you rather conjure a fairy to see to your bloody back?”

“I told you that you would not believe,” he replied coolly, but waved a hand for me to proceed.

“The first was Openshaw.”

* * *

“The Case of the Five Orange Pips.”

He nodded.

“I could not forgive myself for not insisting that he stay here the night he was killed. Or, at the very least, that you and I accompany him to the station. In the days after the conclusion of the case, I rambled all about this great city, carrying my burden of guilt and regret, until I found myself in an old bookshop. The bookseller knew his trade as well I know mine and steered me to a shadowy corner. I found this book, just as you see it, a wolf in domestic household management’s clothing. The bookseller was nowhere to be found. I deposited a tidy sum on his dusty counter and left with absolutely no hope of success.”

“But after a bit of scourging for proper materials and a pair of failed attempts, I did it. There was John Openshaw in the sitting room. I confessed all. It was he who proposed two and twenty lashes for the number of years of his life. The crop was handiest.” Holmes paused and then said,

“Catharsis absolute. Payment rendered in full.”

I shook my head. “How often do you do this?”

“Whenever a misstep on my part has cost someone his life. After Openshaw, I raised John Douglas.”

“ _The Valley of Fear_? But Holmes, Moriarty was responsible for his death!”

“I maintain that I could have taken measures or more strongly impressed upon him the dangers. Well, the blows he inflicted were few, but he insisted on being provided a proper birch branch. Americans! Delightful creatures, even in the afterlife. The crew of the _Cutter Alicia_ were not so gentle. Fortunately, that incident coincided with your attendance of a medical conference in Scotland. I could barely sit for a week!”

I refused to laugh.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I know.”

“Might I attend or observe the next occurrence?”

He twisted on stool and looked up.

“You might, but nothing weighs upon me at present.”

“Well, that makes one of us,” I said as placed my hand on his forehead.

No fever.

Damn.


	2. Chapter 2

So much time passed before the Case of Birching Ghost reared its spectral head again that life had returned to whatever passed for normal at 221B Baker Street and I had quite forgot about the incident. But the carriage ride from the train station at North Walsham to Riding Thorpe Manor, the home of the late Mister Hilton Cubitt, brought the odd circumstances to the forefront of my thoughts once more.

Holmes did not utter a word for the seven miles we journeyed across the flat green landscape of old East Anglia, until the violet rim of the German Ocean appeared over the edge of the Norfolk coast. His earlier anxiety had soured to blank melancholy at the news that his worst fear had been realised and that the danger held in the cipher of dancing men had been already visited, with fatal result, upon the very man who had so desperately sought his aide.

He and I stood at the window and watched the cab drive away with two uniformed policemen, Inspector Martin, and the Cubitt’s murderer, Abe Slaney.

“I failed him, Watson. I failed Hilton Cubitt and his wife, or rather his widow, if she survives. If she does not, well, that’s two failures, isn’t it?”

“You did not shoot Hilton Cubitt, Holmes. Abe Slaney did. And I am not insensitive to the horrific pressures upon her, but ultimately, Mrs. Cubitt shot herself. You are not responsible for their fates.”

“I should have returned with him, done my work here, at Riding Thorpe Manor, made my discovery here. He might have been forewarned.”

“He _was_ forewarned and forearmed. Your presence may have changed nothing, but we cannot know, Holmes. We simply cannot know.”

“You doubted my story about Mister James Phillimore, Watson. When you see Mister Hilton Cubitt sitting upon the settee, you shall have your proof. And I think one of the whip-like branches from that,” he pointed, “pear tree, no doubt planted as a tribute to the happy couple’s union, will make a most fitting instrument of castigation. Excuse me whilst I go harvest the implement.”

“Holmes—”

But, of course, no words of mine reached him.

The following evening, we were once more in London. Holmes was wholly absorbed in preparations for his summonsing and despite his scoffing, I had already made certain Mrs. Hudson would be sleeping elsewhere for the night, not so much out of fear of a ghost as trepidation at whatever flammable, malodorous calamity might be brewing in my friend’s proverbial cauldron.

Indeed, the herbs were pungent. They had fantastical names like moon poppy flossy and mouse-eared scorpion grass. He stirred them into a kind of stew about the hearth and then lit a candle he called a Gran Macabre votive from the last Secret Sect of Evil.

And he called me fanciful!

I wasn’t altogether certain that the last wasn’t something he picked up from a traveling theatre company’s tired Faustian comedy.

He dripped a bit of wax into the mix and, looking at his faithful Mrs. Beeton’s, announced,

“ _Acta est fabula, plaudite!_ ”

“Oh, for goodness—!”

But my words were cut short by a grand explosion, and when the smoke had cleared and the dust had settled, there was Mister Hilton Cubitt, much as he had been on that first visit to our quarters: a tall, ruddy, clean-shaven gentleman of florid face and clear eye.

Except for the bullet wound about his heart, of course. And the dressing gown, nightclothes, and slippers.

“Mister Holmes!” he exclaimed, then he turned his head. “Doctor Watson!”

I smiled and nodded, trying to disguise my astonishment.

Was there nothing truly impossible for the great Sherlock Holmes? It seemed death, the genuine and the false, was an obstacle of only high improbability.

“Mister Cubitt, I shan’t waste your time, I know you’d much prefer to be haunting your beloved Riding Thorpe Manor.”

“Indeed, Mister Holmes, but I am glad you sent for me.”

“Yes? Why?”

“I must thank you for clearing dear Elsie’s name. She will make a complete recovery. I have kept vigil by her side and in her sickbed dreams since the moment I realised my own condition. She has already pledged to devote the remainder of her life to the care of the poor and the administration of my estate. And, also, I have you to thank that justice will be swift and certain on Abe Slaney.”

“But justice has not yet been visited upon me, Mister Cubitt. I failed you. I should not have allowed you to return to Riding Thorpe Manor alone. I should have shared my knowledge, my suspicions, too, earlier and so many missteps. This great tragedy might have been averted.”

“Oh, no, Mister Holmes, I do not blame you in the least.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and nodded.

Common sense was apparently on the side of the dead! Hurrah!

But Holmes was not to be swayed from his purpose. “I summoned you to administer corporal punishment upon my person for my transgressions against you and your family,” he said as he brought out the pear branch.

“Oh, no, Mister Holmes! Is that from our wedding tree?”

“It is.”

The ghost looked, well, a bit pale and nervously clasped and unclasped his great hands. He fixed his earnest blue eyes on my friend.

“Mister Holmes, I am a simple, straight, gentle man by nature. My people have been at Riding Thorpe Manor for a matter of five centuries. We are one of the oldest families in the county of Norfolk, and, if you’ll forgive the immodesty, one of the most honoured.”

“And your legacy might have continued for five more centuries but for my own imbecility! If I had deciphered the dancing men sooner. If I had just—”

“But Mister Holmes, here is the miracle: there is a child! A child that will live and grow and be a proud blessing to his mother, and his father, and the Cubitts will go on at Riding Thorpe Manor.” He smiled. “And I would no more take the lash to him in his weak and wounded mother’s womb than I will take it to you, my dear sir. Whatever human, truly human, weaknesses you displayed, I am grateful to you, and to you, Doctor Watson, and that is my unyielding view on the matter.”

“But Mister Cubitt!” protested Holmes. “Justice!”

“The winter assizes at Norwich will deliver justice upon Abe Slaney. That is the only justice with which I am concerned. You have done your part, sir.”

At these last words, spoken with all finality, Holmes growled and grabbed the book and began flipping pages.

“You cannot bend me to your will, Mister Holmes, at least not with that. And now, I must be getting home.”

“Godspeed, Mister Cubitt,” I said and sought to clasp his hand in mine, but he’d already vanished into mist.

“Damn it, Watson!”

“He forgave you, Holmes! Which is more than Mrs. Hudson is going to do if you don’t open a window and rid the room of this stench.”

Holmes sighed loudly and threw himself into his armchair.

“Oh, are you going to mope?” I asked as I crossed to the window and opened it, letting a cold, cleansing draught of air sweep the space about us. “Just because you didn’t get your bit of switching? I’ll take you over my knee myself if it matters so bloody much.”

Holmes sat up abruptly. “Watson, would you?”

I looked over my shoulder as I closed the window. “Really?”

“Yes,” he said, thoughtfully and speaking more as if to himself than me. “You shall serve as proxy for Mister Hilton Cubitt.”

“Mister Hilton Cubitt does not want a proxy, Holmes! You are the only one insisting on this! And doing it like a stubborn child, if I may say so.” I removed my jacket and waistcoat and unbuttoned my cuffs. “But if you insist on your dose of medicine, the doctor shall provide.”

I drew the curtains and, in an instant, or so it seemed, was witness to Holmes’s bare buttocks stretched ‘cross my lap as I sat in the centre of the settee.

_WHACK!_

“I failed Mister Hilton Cubitt.”

Good Lord, he did sound like a truant schoolboy!

_WHACK!_

“I failed him.”

_WHACK!_

“I failed…”

_WHACK!_

“I…”

“Holmes?”

“Once more, Watson.”

_WHACK!_

His plump, pink flesh quivered in a manner, I confess, most enchanting. Nevertheless, I barked a harsh query. “And now, Holmes? Any payment rendered?”

“Something is stirring, but it isn’t quite catharsis, I don’t think.”

I chuckled, then admonished without rancor. “Holmes.”

He lifted his chest and steepled his fingers at his lips, his elbows braced on the seat of the settee, whilst the swathe of his body between his lower belly and thighs remained bared and extended ‘cross me.

“Watson, I am beginning to see the merits of your argument, and it occurs to me that a monograph on the physiological response to discipline of the lower variety in the adult English male might be of interest to the scientific community. Naturally, I would require your assistance with the data collection.”

“But what about your guilt about cases?”

“I will continue the protocol established this evening and summon the parties implicated and let their views guide my own.”

“And will you be seeking the guidance of the spirit world in the data collection for your monograph?” I asked, giving his buttock a hard tap, then rubbing the bouncing flesh.

Holmes dropped his head and purred, “That world is big enough for the two of us, Watson. No ghosts need apply.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
